Painted terra cotta pots,step by step

Abundance and Gratitude  pots with Creativity Queen,  Janet Keen. 

Want to attract more abundance into your life but keep forgetting to focus on it?

 Make some of these sparkly, little pots write out all your wishes and all you are grateful for and place then where you can see them every day.
This will help you to achieve your dreams.

Resene New Zealand  have an array of gorgeous metallic paints in test pots which are featured in their “Kidz Colour” brochure.
  I used Funtasia and Bedazzle.

 I have chosen a just two of them to paint my magical wishing and gratitude pots.

 Step By Step

Equipment needed

Small terracotta pots and bases, Bunnings

Testpots of Resene metallic paints

Flat backed marbles

Small paintbrush

Plastic white picnic plate

Bostik clearseal, (use as glue)

Gun to go with Clear seal, Bunnings

Thick icecream sticks, $2.00 type shops

Alphabet stamps and decorative stamps, Spotlight
Flat backed embellishments like flowers , Spotlight.

 

Directions

Step 1. Paint two coats of Resene metallic paint from test pots over all surfaces of your pot and your base,  including inside and outside.

Step 2. Dry off between coats with a hairdryer.

Step 3.  Place some of the Clearseal out onto a plastic plate

Step 4. With an ice-cream stick apply the Clearseal to the back of some flat backed marbles.

 
Step 5. Place the marbles around the top of the painted pot. They may slide down at first so you’ll need to keep on pushing them on so they stick.
 Turn the pot upside down so that the marbles don’t have far to slide down.

Step 6. Turn the saucer of the pot upside down and place a ring of the Clearseal on it and  glue the pot to it.

Step 7. Apply some more marbles onto the side of the upside down saucer.

 

Step 8. Place some black ink onto stamps of your choice and stamp them onto the pot in a pattern that you like. 

Step 9. Paint two ice-cream sticks matching colours, stick them together in a t to form a little sign.

 Step 10. Stamp or write the words Gratitude pot or and wishing pot on the horizontal  stick of the miniature sign. 
Step11. Stick on some embellishments from Spotlight of your choice 

Step 12. Stick the sign onto the inside edge of the pots.

Step 13. Hand write or type out one wish and one thing you are grateful for each  week and pop them in their pots.

 If you’re really keen try it more than once a week, daily would be optimum.

Step 14. At the end of  six months see how many of your wishes have come true.

Step 15. Good luck, don't forget to be grateful for what you already have. 
I’m going to be contributing to my pots daily  and looking forward to increased abundance. 


These are just the colours the embellishments and the words I  have chosen , feel free to go wild and invent your own. This is just the jumping off place.

Good luck and tell me your story. 

  Creative quote of the day
“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
― Eckhart Tolle

Adult  art and mosaic and creativity classes Monday to Wednesday mornings 9.30am to 11.30 am from $25.00 per hour plus the cost of materials. 

4 week beginners mosaic class $62.50 per 2 hour session, including materials.

Children's After School art Classes Mondays to Fridays from 3.30pm to 5.00pm 
$25.00 including most materials per hour. 
Students will be asked to do some home play towards a visual diary that we can showcase at the end of the year.

Every child's artwork is different. 
Enquire today, give the special person in your life a creative head start. 

 Phone: 07-3463435 or email jkeen@clear.net.nz to book your space.

Encaustic art Workshop

What could be more pleasurable than going out to a two and a half hour class on a Monday night, creating mini encaustic, (wax) paintings?

Not much in my books.

Ten other people thought it was also their idea of fun, four of whom had attended my watercolour and mixed media painting classes; so I was in good company.

The encaustic course run by Nelson artists and motel owners Lynne and Steve Whitford was fantastic because it was well organised.

Everyone was provided with their own aprons and encaustic irons, with a selection of sixteen coloured wax blocks and a generous supply of shiny, white cards to make paintings on.

Lynne lead us through a series of simple wax application exercises that resulted in beautiful, fluid looking, mini landscapes and abstract creations from all of the class members.

Lynne circulated around the room, helping people and Steve was full of positive comments and practical help. The time evaporated, I ended up with thirteen small squares of experiments which I could make into cards or use as samples. 

 I liked the gold and silver coloured encaustic wax and could see the potential in using them with textured backgrounds towards a volcanic landscape series.  

Lynne and Steve own a motel with an attached gallery in Nelson called Ascot Lodge. When I go on my next photographic trip to the South Island next Autumn I want to book in.

I bought an encaustic iron, a stylus and some encaustic paints and am looking forward to using them an American book called Encaustic Art, The Complete Guide to Creating Fine Art with Wax.

I will be demonstrating some beeswax and encaustic lessons on Monday, Tuesday  and Wednesday mornings if people are interested in attending a taster series of classes, using clear beeswax and acrylic paint with Resene testpots.

If you like the look of the encaustic supplies I have bought; you can buy your own from Lynne and Steve from their website called Ascot Encaustic Art Supplies.

 It’s brilliant to connect with artists from other cities because they can direct you towards the most creative events and places in their region.

 

Creative quote of the day

 “The most important thing a teacher can remember: it only takes one negative comment to kill a dream,” anonymous.

After school art and craft classes from Monday to Friday and adults painting and mosaic classes Mondays to Wednesday mornings.

Phone  07346-3435,  email jkeen@clear.net.nz.  www.jkeen.net.

Mosaic Flower for the Garden, a pictorial journey with Jessica Burling.

                                                                             Step One
Start off with your cut out flower from exterior grade plywood.
          My husband Graham cut it out with our  jigsaw.

                                            Step 2.
                          Sand and undercoat the flower

 Step 3

Choose your coloured marbles to outline flower and glue

 

                                                                Step 4
 Choose other marbles and cut glass tiles and lay out in a pattern you like, leaving even gaps between tiles.

 

                                                 

                                                                           Step 5
                                   Paint around the outside and the back of the flower with  two coats of  Resene testpot colour of your choice.  Mix up some grey sanded grout in a plastic container to tootpaste consistency. Wait five minutes and spread on with a spatula.

                                                                            Step 6
                Clean and remove grout with a sponge.
                  Polish with white vinegar and a cloth.

                                                                              Step 7

Admire your masterpiece.
This  flower will be attached to a painted garden stake with three screws by my husband Graham and will feature with two other marbled flowers in my organic mosaic garden.
Thanks to my assistant, Jessica Burling for all her hard and accurate work.

Creative Quote of the day
Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life. Pablo Picasso

Mosaic Flower Making workshops
 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings 9.30 to 11.30 am
374 Clayton Road, Rotorua Phone 346-3435 email jkeen@clear.net.nz
 

Portrait Painting Class

 Portrait lessons with Janet Keen Creativity Queen


Come to my studio and learn how to paint semi realistic portraits of yourself. 
I will show you my easy-peasy method. 

                                      These people

                                     had never made a

   portrait of themselves before, much less picked up a brush to do any painting.

                                               Can you believe how well they did? 

Sign up for a series of four portrait lessons. 
No experience needed. 
4 weeks for  $250.00 including paints and use of paint brushes. 
Supply your own canvases. 

Using  Resene testpots.



Phone  07 3463435
email jkeen@clear.net.nz

374 Clayton Road, Rotorua

Monday, Tuesday Or Wednesday Mornings 9.30am to 11.30am

Weekend workshops by arrangement, minimum number five required.

Beaded hearts and crosses

Beaded Hearts and Crosses

By Janet Keen Creativity Queen.

Recycling old jewellery.

If you’re anything like me you have a jewellery box full of beads, buttons, broken broaches, vintage crockery,and lone ear-rings that have gone out of fashion.

Don’t throw these gems away. Recycle them into wall ornaments; they make perfect Mother’s Day gifts. 

Materials needed.

Resene testpot of acrylic paint of your choice, Resene  

Piece of 10mm MDF board, available from Bunnings or your husbands wood stash.

Hair dryer

Jigsaw

Tweasers

Sandpaper

Design for a heart and or a cross (google hearts and cross silhouettes)

Bostik Clear Seal glue with the glue gun, Bunnings

Iceblock stick for applying Bostik Clear Seal

Spray can of Plastikote, gloss laquer, Bunnings

Small paintbrush

Screw eyes and string for attaching your piece to the wall,  from Two Buck and More Shop, Tutanekai Street.

Old junk jewellery or beads and buttons, scrapbook embellishments, Spotlight have a good selection.

Beads and scrapbook embellishments, Two Buck and More Shop.

Paper towels and turps or soap and water for cleaning your hands afterwards.

Cloth for polishing

Newspaper

Method.

Cut out your cross or heart with the jigsaw.

Sand the edges.

Paint two coats on the back and sides of your heart or cross in the colour of your choice with Resene Testpots of 

Dry off between coats.

Use the gun to spread some of the glue out onto a plastic plate. Make sure you are sitting near and open window with plenty of ventilation so that you don’t breathe in the fumes of the glue.

Spread some glue with your ice-cream stick onto part of your heart or cross, don’t do too large an area at once or the glue will dry out.

Place beads and broken jewellery on top

If beads are small you will need to lay them on with teasers.

Don’t be afraid to pile small beads on top of each other with a bit of glue to give a 3 D effect.

Keep sticking embellishments and beads on until finished.

Leave to dry overnight.

Polish the beads with a cloth so everything looks shiny and clean.

Lay some newspaper down outside and  place your hearts or crosses on them.

Give them a spray of the gloss Plasticote varnish. Do not breathe in the fumes.

Wait until dry and give another spray.

When dry, turn over and screw in the screw eyes as a wall attachment near the tip of your cross or heart.

 You are welcome to sign up for a heart or cross bead making workshop with me. 
Bring along your old, unwanted jewellery and beads.
 I’ll have the shape, glue, paint  and everything else all ready and you can make it in the comfort of my studio. 

                       My client Fiona's cross, this is the third one she has made and is in the process of making a black and silver one,. Ill post a picture of it when she's finished.


Art, Craft and Mosaic Creativity Classes 

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday  mornings from 9.30am until 12 noon. Ring Janet Keen  07 346-3436 or email jkeen@clear.net.nz  for details and prices

374 Clayton Road, Rotorua, New Zealand 

Artist date according to Julia Cameron's book the Artists Way

It is important as an artist to get out of your  studio  to explore your surroundings.
This helps your painting feel fresh and exciting, the ideas and views you pick up will feed into your work. 
 Thursdays are my  days off. 
I sometimes  go for a walk, go see a foreign movie at the Basement Theatre in Himemoa Street, go out for breakfast or lunch and go shopping.
Or I  go for a trip out of town.  I focus on having fun and it's the only day of the week I don't do any teaching. 

  This Thursday I went to Cafe De Paris in Hinemoa Street, Rotorua for breakfast at 10 am.

 I had gluten free and organic mushroom crepes with a cuppucino, which was lovely.

 Cafe De Paris has free Wi-Fi which is perfect for me to write this post for my blog.

 Top tasting coffee.
 It was a very sunny but frosty morning so having something  warm like this was very welcoming and the cafe itself was well heated, the acoustics good and everyone else dining looked relaxed and happy.

Valerie, the  owner  is doing my beginners mosaic course, in which you make a fish, a mirror and a pot for the first three sessions and grout,  plus paint the back of them in Resene testpot colours. 



All for  only $250 including materials,  running Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings from 9.30am to 11.30am.

 The cafe has happy French music in the background and lovely French posters and art on the wall.
  Valerie  is very friendly and welcoming and obviously has a lot of regular customers. Many of my clients go there from time to time.
You could almost be in France and I think going to a genuine and themed cafe like this is a way of travelling out of your country but without the jet lag.

Of course I still want to travel to France, I am hoping we will be doing this next year.
 I just need to keep affirming that I will make enough money through my art teaching and writing plus photography business to pay for it.

If local or international visitors  want a cozy slice of Kiwi culture and food with a French twist you should give Cafe de Paris a go, the menu is quite extensive and the prices are very reasonable.
Creative Quote of the Day
 “He showed the words “chocolate cake” to a group of Americans and recorded their word associations. “Guilt” was the top response. If that strikes you as unexceptional, consider the response of French eaters to the same prompt: “celebration.”
― Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Teaching pupils painting and Mosaics

I enjoy teaching people how to be creative.
 I also enjoy reading books about world travel and adventuring and I write articles for newspapers, my blog and magazines about it. 

 I have some great clients and the things they do to be great clients are listed here.
1.They enjoy the process of creating without worrying and stressing about the end result. 
2.They are open to new ideas.
3. They have a sense of fun and adventure with regard to their art. 
4.They are happy with the peace and tranquility they get from switching over to the right brain for a while. 

Mosaics are wonderful things to help teach people to get into this mode.

Here is my longest  client Kyle Burling doing his goldfish painting on stretched canvas.
I've had him since he was eight years old.
He is now twenty and doing a tertiary level Diploma in Visual Arts at the Waiariki Institute of Technology.

Kyle tackles all sorts of paintings and methodically works towards his goals.
He is positive about his results.

Finn is eight about the same age that I started teaching Kyle.
 He's a lovely, focused and sensitive person with a great ability to draw quite accurately and at times humourously. 
 He is very imaginative and tells me some brilliant stories about hauling in sharks and hunting wild pigs, which I have told him he could write down and illustrate.
You are never too young to start writing and publishing your own books.
He is full of confidence in his own ideas and write a very inventive set of ghost jokes in his visual diary.

This is Kyra's first painting with me.
She does work  that I  would describe as Edgy Cute.
 She has her own style and is good at drawing fantasy figures out of her head. She has very clear ideas of how she wishes to express herself. 
 Part of my  role as I see it,  is to empower her on her journey.

Kyra's third painting with me.
 My approach to teaching is to work with each pupils strengths.
We are not always trying to paint beautiful, safe paintings, we are trying to be open and affirming towards the universe and all it has to offer.

I have a lot of imagery available of other artists in books and my work and we negotiate what the pupil wpuld like to do. 
It's really not about me imposing my will onto my clients. 

 Ryan and Cecily  are painting a set of acrylic painting, focusing on animals for their parent's motel.
They are also doing mosaics and Cecily loves doing pretty pictures about Barbie. 

They are very enthusiastic and think I am a kind teacher.

Hanxi and Hanwei are very focused and into achieving well. 
 These three little painting exercises were hearts on mini stretched canvases that they did to celebrate mothers day.

The hearts were cut out of scrapbooking paper that you can buy from places like Spotlight.
 Resene paint was used as a base.
 After this embellishments are put on with glue.
When it's dry you spray clear laquer over the top.

Yuhko has been coming for a number of years and she is really into doing realistic flower and landscape paintings.
 She is a good focused worker and has a natural aptitude with drawing. 

With this client I am working through a book called How to Paint What  you See.
It was the very first book I worked my way through when I started painting in 1986
The lessons are still relevant today.
I lent her the book so she can do homework exercises.
This will help her with accelerated learning.

Valerie owns Cafe De Paris in Hinemoa Street, Rotorua. 

It has free wi-fi and is a favourite with locals and visitors. 

She has lovely cafe food with a French twist and has decorated the walls beautifully with art posters. Who knows, some mosaics may appear on her  Cafe walls.

 She is taking some time out on Monday mornings to be creative.

She is naturally good with her hands and artistic and puts colours together well. 

I love teaching people from other countries and it is my ambition to travel to France. 

 

 This pupil has set up her own work space at home and is all set to do some of her own projects.

It's great when pupils get enough confidence up to do their own thing.

Look at this lovely result.

Beginners mosaic class. Fish or bird, mirror or mini picture and pot.

$250.00 for four sessons of two hours.

Materials included.

Or $62.50 per time.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday mornings 9.30am to 11.30am

Ring 346-3435 or  email     jkeen@clear.net.nz

Look at these gorgeous results from first time mosaic making pupil  Ann Sullivan.

Quote from Ann Sullivan about the course.

 I have never had much interest in creative activities such
as painting or embroidery or tapestry or ...  . However I
read an article by Janet on mosaic-ing and it sounded most interesting - like doing jigsaw puzzles which I love. It didn't sound too hard and i thought even i could do it. so I read about Janet's 4-week mosaic course on her website and decided to give it a go. I thought at first i might feel awkward as creativity is so not my thing,  but Janet is down-to-earth, and was so welcoming, friendly, helpful, and encouraging Ii felt comfortable from the start. I have just finished the course and it has been really great, the best thing I've done for a long time. I got to choose, cut out and stick pieces of pretty, brightly coloured glass, beads, and pottery to some plywood bird and butterfly shapes, and to a plant pot. It was just like doing a jigsaw puzzle, but with more mess. The whole experience was absorbing and satisfying. So much so I am going to go out and buy myself a jigsaw and plywood and glue, smash a few plates and cups, and give it a go myself. Ann Sullivan

Beautiful results.
Week One: Glass tiled bird or fish
Week Two: Ceramic Tile mirror or picture
Week Three: Broken crockery  pot.
Week Four: Grout all of them and paint with Resene paints.
$62.50 including materials per week for four week beginners course.
Website www.jkeen.net

Book now for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday mornings.
9.30am to 11.30am

Creative Quote of the Day

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists.
Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.
John Steinbeck



Creative art Classes
For all ages and stages, from beginners who have not painted since school days, to watercolourists and oil painters ready to try a new direction.

Loosen up and learn to paint with everything on anything. That’s what mixed media painting is all about.

 Combine different painting and drawing materials and methods.
Have fun experimenting with crayons, oil pastels, pencils, stamps, stencils, gel mediums, fluid acrylics, inks, hard bodied paints, varnishes, reflective and metallic paints, and collage items.

You’ll learn the ins and outs of super duper new art products.
 Never be confused in an art supply shop again!

Explore the magical effects of acrylic paint.
It can slide, drip, splatter, crawl, pool and puddle, shine and sparkle, and veil or reveal.
You’ll be amazed at what you can ‘get away with’ using acrylic paint.
You can cover up your mistakes easy peasy and paint at a galloping pace because it dries quickly.

There’s no right or wrong in this class.
 Share ideas and laughs, give it your best shot and embrace a new hobby to last a lifetime.

COURSE OUTLINE 6 weeks

$62.50 per two hour session, plus bring your own materials. List supplied. Be prepared to do some play at home.

• Understand colour and texture ..........Week 1.
• Discover acrylic’s versatility   .......  Week 2.
• Create imaginative backgrounds .......Week 3
• Learn composition and design   ..........  Week 4.
• Layer paint, and develop surface treatments and special effects                                            ....... Week 5
• Incorporate collage, digital photographs and other transfer techniques                                    ........  Week 6.

Ring Janet Keen 3463435 to book in for Fridays